


Still with you

by CMDAK



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 15:37:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6526084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CMDAK/pseuds/CMDAK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happiness was not something that James was ever allowed to have. He was only given a taste of it and then robbed of it, left to rot and drown in the bitterness that always followed those short, happy moments of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still with you

**Author's Note:**

> This was week 9 of the 52 weeks challenge. It was supposed to be horror, but I never actually liked horror so I know I failed at conveying the proper feeling. Mostly because I focused on the wrong character. 
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoy and please forgive all the mistakes.

James felt as if he had been cursed to live a life without true happiness. Or worse still, a life in which he tasted a bit of happiness and then to be thrown down the spiral of emptiness and sadness. It had happened when he was young and happy with his parents and then Death ripped them from him. And then he got adopted, found happiness again for a little while and then Death struck again, because it was a cruel creature that didn’t care that a child was going through the pain of loss yet again. And then again when he had managed to find a bit of stability and normality in the navy, only for his world to be torn down again and be left alone.

 

He had given up then. Threw his hands into the air and started working for the MI6, quickly climbing through the ranks until he became a double oh agent and threw himself into missions with so little care if he lived or died that he always came back in pieces, but not defeated. The psychiatrists tried to help him by forcing him to talk and shoving pills down his throat, but he refused that and protected himself with endless amounts of alcohol.

 

And then Q came into his life, sweet, innocent and very civilian Q. He had no idea what James did, just that it gave him bruises and because he didn’t want to see those beautiful green eyes ever be filled with sadness or worry again, James started to be more careful in his missions, surprising even M when he managed to actually return from one without as much as a single scratch and the Quartermaster when he brought him all the equipment looking as good as new.

 

“Should I worry that you are a clone and that you will turn on us when we look away and kill is all?” The old major had asked jokingly and James laughed, patting his back.

 

“Quartermaster, you needn’t worry; I am simply wishing to avoid getting a certain look for a certain someone.” Everyone in MI6 found out that James had fallen in love in less than an hour after he had said that and in less than two hours, he was called in M’s office for a serious talk, the woman freezing when R presented her with the file on Q.

 

“A bloody civilian, Bond,” she hissed, voice low and full of worry. “Have you finally lost what little you had of your mind? If your enemies find out—”

 

“They won’t,” he growled, squeezing the arm rests so hard that they actually cracked. “Q is safe because Q is mine. Nothing bad will happen to him.”

 

He left then, uncaring that she was ordering him back in her office and sure that she wouldn’t keep to her word and fire him because he was the best man she had. And he had been right not to fall for her bluff, because all the woman did was give him two months off so he could be sure of his decision.

 

He was tanning with Q in less than a day on a private island, laughing and enjoying each other into the following day. They loved each other; Q was the world to him and vice versa and when he awkwardly asked the man to marry him during the last dinner on the island – that went completely wrong because he had been so nervous about the whole thing that he had managed to almost burn down the house and Q with it – the young man agreed without missing a beat.

 

The next month, Q and he were married in a private ceremony on his estate in Scotland and James promised M that he would retire after one, last mission. Not because Q was forcing him or anything like that, but because he felt like that was the right thing to do. He was happy now and he no longer wished to dance with death; all he wanted was a nice, normal life.

 

It also helped that he had amounted enough money not to have to work a single day in his life – and that was without taking into consideration what his parents had left him, title and rank included – and Q was smart enough to work for Apple and Samsung only when he felt like it, banks and other huge companies threw money at him to get him to so much as glance in their direction.

 

“Then retire now,” the woman hissed and really, was she part snake or something? Because she seemed to hiss more than actually talk.

 

“I owe 006 to see this through the end,” he said grimly and M had nothing else to say, knowing just how close the two had been and remembering how much he had suffered when the corrupt part of the KGB took him away.

 

He kissed Q goodbye that day, ended up doing it with him on the kitchen counter and then one more time right in front of the door – because Q was young and knew so many tricks to keep one going that if M found out about it, she would insist on making him a double oh agent just to give him all the honey pots missions they had – and then he rushed to MI6, breaking traffic laws that had yet been invented.

 

“ _You turned me into a cliché sprouting man because I already miss you,”_ Q breathed into the phone while James waited for the plane to take off – and if the stewardess dared to glare at him one more time while he was trying to pacify his husband, he was going to shove the briefcase that the Quartermaster gave him down her throat.

 

“Don’t worry, darling; I will love you no matter how many clichés pass those sinful lips of yours.” A horrible idea to think of them because the pants were suddenly too tight and James started to understand why Q preferred those lose suits that could easily be discarded.

 

“ _I am afraid you’ll forget just how sinful my lips can be on this long trip of yours, loving husband of mine,”_ Q purred and James glanced at the bathroom, the stewardess’s eyes widening.

 

“Sir, if you—”

 

“I’m talking with my husband whom I won’t see for two months, so butt out,” he growled at her and the woman simply gave up. He paid a lot to charter this private plane and she sure as hell won’t be the reason why the British government would demand retribution for him not reaching his destination on time. “Now, love, where were we?”

 

Q chuckled. “ _I think we’ll pick this up when you come back to me, okay?_ ”

 

They never got to pick anything back up. While James was busy defending MI6, the UK, and the entire world from Russian terrorists, someone who had a grudge against him broke in his supposedly secure apartment, kidnapped his husband and killed him.

 

The bastards beat his beloved and innocent Q until his ribs broke and stabbed his lungs, 009 and 004 getting to the apartment just in time to see the young man breathe out his last breath on his own. And then Q held on long enough for James to come to the hospital and grasp his hand, apologize for not being them for the worse part, like he had swore in front of the minister and beg him to come back and then he flatlined.

 

James put him in the cold ground three days later and on the following week, he went on an unauthorized manhunt with the help of the people he considered to be friends in MI6 and laid waste, Death avoiding him each time.

 

M didn’t say anything. Just sent James on a long vacation and had other agents keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. But all James did on that vacation was try to drink himself into the grave next to Q’s, talking with the man’s glasses every now and then, because that was all he had left of the man: the glasses and happy memories that were all too little.

 

And then Vesper walked in his life, two years later, green eyes almost as intense as Q’s and tongue almost as sharp as his deceased heart’s. She was a storm in the torrid dessert of emptiness, a ray of light in the eternal darkness that had came with Q’s eyelids closing for the last time, and because he was a moron, he tried again to be happy.

 

The relationship started off slowly, James letting the woman know right off the bat that he wouldn’t be able to fully love again, and she understood. She smiled sadly at him as if she knew and squeezed his hand and took him to bed, covering his face in warm kisses and filling his ears with promises of a better life and he allowed himself to believe and feel just enough to find her endearing and to care for her.

 

The following day, he retired and M allowed it without saying a single word, Eve throwing a goodbye party in his honor, presenting him with a golden pocket watch as thanks for all he did for Queen and Country while the Queen herself knighted him in a private ceremony.

 

He bought a new apartment for him and Vesper – because the old apartment was him and Q and no matter how much the woman insisted that he should sell it and spend the money on buying a house for them, he refused to listen because it was _his and Q’s_ and his smell still lingered in it as did his presence and whenever he felt so sad and empty that not even her touches could cure it, he went there and felt better – and tried to live a normal life.

 

However it seemed that the curse that robbed him of happiness was also dead set on robbing him of a normal life. On the night before the wedding – the woman demanded to be given a ring and his last name if she couldn’t have all of his heart – he dreamt of Q. The man was in pain and gasping for breath, crawling on the floor as he coughed blood and begged him not to do something.

 

 _“Not to leave? Not to be an agent? Not to be me? What?”_ James asked, trying to untangle himself from whatever was holding him in place so he could gather him in his arms and protect him.

 

Q opened his mouth, but the alarm went off before he could talk and James was thrown in the whirlwind of a wedding day that he hadn’t experienced until then, running to make sure everything was as Vesper wanted to be, changing his suit and then tie when he was informed that the bride found them either too dark or too bright and then his shoes because they were too shiny and she was afraid that it would clash with her jewels – which had belonged to his mother and his stomach felt funny when he saw how they looked on her.

 

Later that night, spent but not quite satisfied by Vesper’s touch and annoyed because she had threw a fit when Eve accidentally let it slip at the after-dinner that his wedding with Q had taken place at Skyfall – a place she hadn’t seen yet – and had rented an entire island for their honeymoon – while he had rented a simple penthouse in Austria for theirs – James had dreamt of the broken Q again, still crying still begging him not to do it, still unable to reach him.

 

And that was only the beginning. He was struck with an unknown illness and thus, unable to leave the room, leaving Vesper to spend the entire month doing whatever she wanted during the day in the city and crawl too exhausted to even ask him if he was okay at night.

 

But that was strangely okay with him, because he never felt truly alone during the day. He always felt something warm push up against his back and contentment washed over him, even though no one was there. His fever was to blame for it, no doubt, a strange fever that the doctors couldn’t explain, but he was happy to have it.

 

“You’ll get better once we get back home,” Vesper assured him two days before they were set to get to London, drowning him in love and support once again.

 

He felt cold on the following day and his dreams were plagued with his suffering husband once more, even if his ailment suddenly went away. The dreams followed him back to London as did Vesper’s cold warmth – the oxymoron was the only way he could put what he felt into words – and after two months of nothing but good health, he was sick again and Vesper annoyed once more.

 

But this time, he also started to hallucinate. He saw Q in the corner of his eye, bruised and hurting and sad. He even started to hear his whimpers and the first time he woke Vesper up to ask her if she heard the same thing he had, she smacked him and went to sleep in the guest room, cussing him.

 

“Just because you can’t sleep, that doesn’t mean you have to keep _me_ up.” She slammed the door and James felt warmth again, Q’s whimpers suddenly disappearing.

 

But his ailment only became worse and no doctors knew what was wrong with him, not even the MI6 ones. They were all stunned because his blood tests came back perfect each time and Vesper cried buckets and buckets, always running to do her shopping and left him alone to his pain and his hallucinations of Q.

 

James dreamt that it was Q who helped him into the shower, that it was Q who watched over him when he was alone and that it was Q who held his hand when his body was wrecked with painful shivers, the coughing fit that he had developed seemingly overnight hurting his chest so much that he wasn’t surprised when he the napkins started to fill up with blood.

 

And the rooms were always so cold when he had those dreams, the windows fogging up or outright getting covered in ice and the side of his body that Q touched was nub, as if he had leaned on pure ice. But deep inside, he felt warm and he clung to that dream as much as he could, sitting for hours under the warm shower spray and just smiling and trying to caress his hallucination, the sad and broken Q weeping by his side.

 

“You’ll sleep in the guest room until you get better,” Vesper announced one night, after he had puked blood all over her precious Egyptian silk – because she was above cotton and apparently China’s silk was suddenly trash as far as her flawless skin was concerned – covers. “No reason for both of us to get sick, especially since one of us has to be strong to take care of the house.”

 

“But Vesper… I need you,” he gasped out, clutching his throat. He felt like that one time he had been forced to swallow a broken glass and he got sadder because of how worried Q looked when he had come to visit him into the hospital, that also being the first time he heard the man scream on top of his lungs until he was allowed to stay with him until he was better.

 

Vesper clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, pushing the wheelchair that he had been reduced to use out of what was supposed to be their matrimonial bedroom. “You need a doctor, not me, silly. And a doctor is on his way, don’t worry.” She leaned over and patted his head, smiling sweetly at him. “He’s even my own personal doctor, which is a proof of how much I love you and I worry about this deteriorating health of yours because he is costing me an arm and a leg.” James was pretty sure that the man was being paid out of his bank account.

 

Things only started to get weirder from then on. Q’s glasses disappeared and that drove him mad with grief to the point that he actually sat down and cried after he was done turning the house upside down and Vesper got mad and started to shout at him until a vase broke near her.

 

James hugged the terrified woman to his chest. “It’s okay. I’ll get you a new vase and new flowers and I’ll find Q’s glasses.”

 

She pushed him away when he said that and stomped into their bedroom – now simply hers – slamming the bedroom door shut. “Forget the bloody glasses, James. Who cares about them anyway?” James shook with anger and he was happy that he was too weak to break down the door and slap her, because he had made it a personal mission to never hit a woman, no matter how much she deserved it. “He’s dead! Accept it and let it go!” She screamed when something broke in the room, but James did not try to get to her, assuming that she had thrown something at the door. And whatever it was that she broke, because of her cruel words, he decided not to replace it.

 

And then there were the other strange things that started to happen. The plates of food that Vesper put in front of him – the only thing she actually did for him, mind you, and always after she had treated him coldly, James assuming that this was her way of apologizing – started to fly off the table and the doctor that she had brought over kept tripping whenever he tried to get close to him. The straw that broke the camel’s back as far as the medicine man was concerned had been when he had tripped and the syringe that was meant for James’ spine ended up in his own arm, shouting in pure pain when _something_ made the liquid enter his blood stream.

 

And then there were the things that were happening to Vesper herself. The showerhead fell on her head while she was washing, the oven suddenly spat out a flame large enough to take her eyebrows off when she was trying to cook, the window broke when she tried to close it and James – who, by now, was feeling much better and he was able to walk on his own again – had to dive to save her from a huge shard that almost impaled her.

 

“This is all because you refused to spend a bit of money on me,” she wept in his arms, hugging him tightly. “You bought the cheapest thing you could find and you filled it with even cheaper things because I am not _him_ and I’ll never be him, so forget that bloody corpse already and live here, with _me._ ”

 

James pushed her away when she had said that, fuming. “Don’t you dare speak ill of Q,” he growled, unaware of the way the ground had shook. “I told you from the start that he was the entire world to me and that while I will never compare you to him he will always have a special place in my heart.”

 

She tried to argue, but the coffee table that was made out of Swarovski crystal – because, contrary to what she had accused him earlier, it had been her who had bought every bloody thing in the house and naturally everything was expensive beyond reason – exploded and Vesper had to be rushed to the hospital.

 

Her face would have some scarring and when she heard that, she wept again and sent James away, throwing the vase of flowers that he had brought her at his head. “Don’t you dare come back here until my face is perfect again, do you hear me?” She screamed on top of her lungs and James was sure that he would soon be presented with a huge bill for plastic surgery.

 

But if that made the woman he had married happy, then he supposed that he would also be happy. After all, when Q was happy – and it was always over the tiniest thing possible, such as a kiss form James or a cup of hot tea pushed in his direction when he was a line of code away from making something wonderful again – he was happy, so the same had to apply with Vesper, right?

 

Wrong.

 

He was miserable and starting to feel ill again, Vesper was being cruel, Q was in even bigger pain in his dreams, and the house felt like it was haunted. Objects were being moved, there was an indentation on the other side in the bed he slept alone – because Vesper was still upset with  him over the exploding coffee table – and Vesper herself continued to suffer misfortune, although James had never had to save her from anything life threatening.

 

“James, there’s something seriously wrong going on,” Eve whispered horrified when she met with him for what had become their weekly lunch. “Your eyes are sinking in your face again and you look deadly pale.”

 

James turned his head to the right and coughed, shivering. “I think I am becoming sick again, but that is not what I called you here for.” He leaned over the table and grabbed the woman’s warm hands in his clammy ones, surprised and happy that the woman squeezed them instead of pulling away like vesper usually did. “I think Q’s haunting me,” he whispered, turning his head suddenly when he thought he saw the man sitting by his right.

 

Eve let out a heavy sigh and looked at him with even more worry. “Darling James, I know you miss the poor boy, but ghosts don’t exist. This is your sickness talking and I am pretty sure that Vesper is to blame for it.” The saltshaker suddenly fell and Eve yelped. “This proves nothing, James.”

 

But for him, it did.

 

He started talking with Q’s ghost during the day, asking him what was wrong and if Eve’s suspicions about Vesper – which were slowly starting to become his – where right. But he never got a clear answer. Just a moment of warmness over his lips and a slight pressure around his body which he chose to read as a kiss and a hug.

 

“ _She’s killing you, you know,”_ Q said in his dreams, his back turned to him, that wheezing sound following each of his words. “ _She’s killing you and you are letting her and I am not strong enough to defend you.”_ James tried to hug the man, but he went right through him and he was suddenly sitting in front of his tombstone, his heart cold and empty once again. “ _Please don’t let her kill you. She already killed me._ ”

 

He woke up with the start, scaring Vesper so hard that she dropped the silver tray she was carrying on the ground, his nightstand falling on top of the food for an apparent good measure and just missing her toes. “James, love, you scared me,” she exclaimed, expertly missing the shards as she ran to hug him. “Did you have another bad dream?” She asked, sounding worried, the room suddenly getting colder and the sheet over him being roughly pulled from him, almost making her fall face first into the mess that was on the floor.

 

“A memory and a warning,” he said simply and moved out of her reach, slamming the door to the bathroom shut behind him and locking it.

 

“James? James, what’s wrong?” She asked through the door, banging on it. “James, open the door, you’re scaring me!”  
  
“I am only taking a shower, don’t worry.” He turned on the hot water and started to undress, freezing when he saw thin lines appearing on the fogged up mirror. “I’ll be out in a minute, woman! Just let me shower in peace!”

 

He recognized that writing instantly and his heart filled with joy, ignoring that the word Q had spelled was ‘danger’.

 

“Q? Q, are you here?” He whispered, pressing his face against the mirror, kissing the lines and smiling. “I miss you so much, Q. And I am so sorry that I wasn’t here to protect you from my enemies and that I didn’t tell you that—Ouch!” He broke off when he got hit in the head with the soap and new lines appeared on the mirror.

 

“ _Focus_ ,” the new word said and then a line pointed to ‘danger’, James realizing that Vesper had gone eerily silent.

 

“She was poisoning me with her food, wasn’t she?” He asked the Q’s ghost that was a tiny bit visible in the corner of the shower due to the steam, sighing when the saw him nod. The next question that he asked had him shake with anger. “Did she also kill you?” The ghost nodded again and James walked into the shower, trying to hug the steam. “Why? I didn’t even know her back then. Why did she kill you?”

 

“Because you killed my man,” Vesper’s cold voice came from right behind him and James jumped out of the way just in time to avoid getting a bullet lodged in his spine. “I see that my poison only affected what little was left of your brain, but not your senses.”

 

She squeezed the trigger and the mirror behind him shattered. But all he cared about was that the harpy had just admitted that she had robbed him of Q. “You’re going to have to refresh my memory because I killed many and all of them had tried to do that to me first.”

 

Vesper looked hurt and he decided that was the only look that he truly loved on her. “You wouldn’t remember him, of course. To you, he was nothing more than that week’s mad man with a plan, but to me he was the world.” She tilted her head back and her eyes shone, squeezing the gun’s trigger again and missing him by an inch when he tried to move. “But I remember you pathetic Q and the way cried in pain and begged for his life.”    

 

“Don’t you dare,” he warned, aware but uncaring that he didn’t have a weapon on him and that the world was extremely out of focus. If a single, venomous word passed her thin lips and was directed at Q, he would rip her limb from limb even as he was being filled with bullets. “Q was above about such things.”

 

She rolled her eyes, snarling. “Q, Q, Q! That’s all you know to say.” She missed him again and he saw clear for a moment, noticing that she was just as surprised as he was that her bullets couldn’t find their target. “And yes, he didn’t beg for his life; he begged for yours. He knew you were a double oh agent and the second we entered his apartment, he knew that we wanted to hurt you, so he got on his knees and begged us to spare you.”

 

Of course his darling, brilliant man realized what he was. Of course Q knew what his real job was and of course he never once brought it up, not even when he silently cried on the chair by his bed in the hospital, heart small with fear. And James loved him even more for that, if it was possible, because Q must have been aware that James had grew to love his job in a strange way and even though it hurt him, he had never asked him to quit. Only to be more careful and try his best.

 

Vesper snarled when she saw the smile on his face and spat him in the eye. “Even know, when I am about to kill you, you’re thinking about him.” She huffed, shaking her head. “You know that I actually tried to love you? That I fell a little for you in the beginning? But then when we moved together and I saw you bring those horrible glasses with you, touching them before you slept with me and…” She trailed off and shivered in disgust. “I realized that you’ll always love that decomposing corpse, so I decided to stay true to my corpse.”

 

 “If you’d have actually loved that man as you claimed you did, you wouldn’t refer to him as a corpse.” James closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. “I am so sorry, Q. You deserved so much better than me and you deserved to die of old age, not because of a mad woman’s grudge,” he whispered and Vesper suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream.

 

“Get away from me!” She continued to scream as she empted her gun in the thick fog that was slowly advancing towards her and that James knew to be Q without a doubt. “What the fuck is this?” She threw the empty gun and tripped, not managing to hit her head. “Get away from me!”

 

But the ghost continued to advance towards her and James rushed to wrap his arms around the pale Q, letting out a sob when he didn’t fall face first into the ground. “My love,” he breathed out and pushed his face into the icy hair, ignoring that it was so cold it hurt. “My love, leave her and turn around so I could kiss you,” he pleaded and Vesper fainted, the world silent except for the knocks that were coming from the front door. “Please, Q, let me give you the goodbye kiss that I couldn’t. Let me feel your lips against mine once more, even if they won’t be warm or soft.”

 

And Q turned slowly and smiled at James, closing his eyes and slightly pushing himself up on his toes as he always did and James kissed him. His lips froze and his head started to hurt and the ground was pulled out from beneath him, everything turning black. But he didn’t care and he smiled because he had kissed Q and he felt them there with him, in that darkness, warm like he had always been.

 

***

 

”James? James, can you hear me?”  
 

 He could, but the voice wasn’t Q’s so he didn’t care to answer. “That’s not very nice, James,” Q chided him and James rolled on his side and buried his face in the man’s lap, groaning. It wasn’t, but wasn’t it ruder still to bother someone when they were happy?

 

“James, please open your eyes and try to follow the light.”

 

If that light wasn’t leading him to the bedroom in which Q waited for him on a bed of roses, he wasn’t following it anywhere and Eve could put a sock in it. He was happy right where he was and there wasn’t anything in this world that would get him to move.

 

“James, don’t be so dramatic,” Q murmured against his ears, sighing. “I think I was dramatic for the both of us for five lives to come. And I am tired and fading and I need to know that my struggles weren’t for nothing.” No, no, of course they weren’t. “Then open your eyes and live for the both us, okay? I miss you, but it is not your time.”

 

And he did, the powerful light of the real world stinging his eyes so much that they started watering. He felt something heavy on his chest and he realized that it was Eve who was hugging him, thank God or whoever that he was finally awake.

 

“You’ve been in a coma for a month,” she started to explain without being prompted, the doctors and nurses fussing around, poking and probing and asking if he felt this or that, writing down his nods and grunts in their tablets. “Do you remember what happened?” She asked carefully, the worry she had in her eyes making her look infinitely older.

 

James nodded and after being given a glass of water, he found his voice – cracked and barely a whisper, but it was there. “Vesper… She was trying to poison me and when her patience finally ran out, she tried to use a gun. She missed and then…” He trailed off, knowing that he would be locked in a mental institute if he said that Q’s ghost appeared and acted like a shield, saving him.

 

“What she was giving you couldn’t be found in your blood if you didn’t look specifically for it, completely disappearing after two days,” one of the doctors started to explain. “MI6 made sure to get each of your blood samples, but we didn’t know for which poison to check first.” He looked ashamed to say that, a deep frown on his wrinkled face, James remembering the man as the poor doctor that always got stuck with nursing him back to health whenever he went overboard during a mission.

 

Eve squeezed his hand to get his attention, smiling sadly at him. “The poison was a slow acting one, causing great pain and hallucinations and she must have ingested some herself because when we finally managed to break down the reinforced door, she was stark mad, screaming about vengeful ghosts while you were passed out in a pool of your own blood.”

 

“Shot?” He struggled to ask, feeling dizzy.

 

Eve shook her head. “Vesper missed you every time, again due to the poison. But when the mirror behind you shattered, a few rather large shards entered your back and it didn’t help when you fell down and pushed them further in.” She hugged him again and James realized that he couldn’t feel his back, probably numbed with morphine or some other anesthesia so he wouldn’t scream in pain. “James, we all thought we had lost you. Please let MI6 do a thorough background check the next time you plan to marry, okay?”

 

James snorted. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that again. Or try to love, for that matter. It wouldn’t be fair to Q, or to whomever poor soul that actually falls for me.” He did feel bad for Vesper a little bit, but also not really. It was cruel to ask someone to play second fiddle to your true love and he now realized that a person who didn’t plan to slowly kill him wouldn’t accept that so easily and with a smile on their face.

 

“Oh, James,” Eve sighed, caressing his face. “I am not saying that you’ll ever find someone who you will love more than Q or even as much as the darling man, but you mustn’t give up on love entirely.” She smiled and then suddenly moved from him, digging in her pure for something. “I thought you’d want these, but if they hurt you…” She trailed off and put Q’s glasses in James’ hands and he felt warm again.

 

“Thank you, Eve. You always know what I need.” He kissed the glasses and held them to his chest, that night finally dreaming of a Q that looked as he did not the day they married, happy and perfect.

 

He sold the apartment he had bought with Vesper and moved back in his home with Q, his life entering a strange normality in which he trained junior agents weekly in hand to hand combat and in handling weapons, drinking tea every Saturday with Eve and M and the new Quartermaster, a young man that had his blood pressure rise through the roof whenever he told him what other crazy thing he had done for an agent in that week or month.

 

And he also talked every now and then with Q’s glasses, hoping to feel the room’s temperature drop below zero, and that warmth he loved envelop him once more. But it never did and frankly, James was happier, because it meant that Q had finally moved on and his soul was at rest.  

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have anything against Vesper and I quite liked her character, the only true female romance given to James that was allowed to properly grow. But she was the only Bond Girl (Woman, really) that might have gone down this path given the right circumstances.


End file.
